She's got so much more to do

Shannon Dill makes a list while undergoing cancer treatments.

Shannon Dill makes a list while undergoing cancer treatments.

June 13, 2007|JENNIFER OCHSTEIN Tribune Correspondent

LAKEVILLE Shannon Dill has a to-do list. "I started a list of things I want do to," she said. "They're things I'll probably never do, but ..." She's added to the list slowly since she found out she has breast cancer for a second time. "You get a new perspective on life," said Dill, 32, about finding out you have cancer. "I know everyone says that, but it's true." What she also knows is that she will eventually succumb to the cancer in her body. That's not pessimism on her part. It's realism. "I will die from cancer," she said, as her son Bryce, 3, played with his cars at her feet on the floor. "But it's going to be a long time from now, right, buddy?" One thing on her list is skydiving. "I want to jump out of a plane," she said, adding that's because she's afraid of heights and wants to overcome the fear. "I know it would scare the dickens out of me, but my husband (Brad Dill) has done it. He was in the Navy." She also wanted to go on "The Price Is Right" game show and meet the host, Bob Barker. But she said she probably needs to cross that off the list, since he's retired. Maybe she could try the game show "Deal or No Deal." That might be fun, too. And a U2 concert ... "I would also love for him to be old enough to take to Disney World and remember it," Dill said, looking again at her son. But now she's just trying to make it through her chemotherapy treatments. Dill first found out she had cancer in March 2005, right after Bryce was born. At the time, doctors told her she was too young to have breast cancer when she told them she found a lump. She was told her cancer was dried milk in her milk ducts from not breast-feeding. "But it just kept getting bigger and bigger and sorer and sorer," she said. Doctors finally sent her for a mammogram and biopsy, discovering breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy and mastectomy and afterward started four months of chemotherapy in May 2005. After that, she underwent 33 sessions of radiation. By the time her treatment was over, her blood work looked good, she said. But this past January she began getting sick again. She was overcome with stomach cramps, and her doctors told her it was a simple urinary tract infection. But after a month in the hospital, they discovered a cyst on an ovary. She was operated on and told she'd be back to her old self within a few days. "Two weeks later, I was still in bed," Dill said. "But I knew my body and something was wrong." Indeed. She made an appointment with her oncologist in February and within 24 hours she was diagnosed with cancer again, except this time it spread to her bones and liver. She's been chemotherapy ever since. Because the cancer has spread, Dill said the cancer could disappear and then reappear again anywhere in her body. That's why her prognosis isn't very positive. And this time around, she said, the diagnosis didn't surprise her. She's just trying to get through it. "There's no nausea this time, but I have a lot of bone pain," she said, adding that's a side effect of one of the chemotherapy treatments she's receiving. "That's been the worst of it -- the bone pain. And the hair loss. It was just starting to grow back." Her mother-in-law, Loretta Zumbaugh, who is helping organize a benefit for Dill's medical expenses, said these bouts of cancer have "been a rough road." But the family, she said, is remaining strong and at Dill's side. For her part, Dill said her friends ask her how she stays so strong and not constantly crying about her situation. While she said she has her moments when she cries, she simply looks at what she has to look forward to -- her son and husband, whom, she said, works 60 to 70 hours each week and then takes care of her and Bryce when she's not feeling well. "I wake up every day, and I know what I have to do to get by," she said. And as for the tears, she said, people tell her that she can cry if she needs to. But, at this point, she doesn't need to, she said. "My story is no different than 30,000 other people who have cancer," Dill said. "I'm not special."